Thursday 18th April 2024

Cold northerly wind today, with a lot of rain. Yesterday was glorious - warm even, and I was able to bring all the plants outside and leave them happily sunning themselves.

It's amazing how quickly we forget the months of rain and gales after one single day of sunshine and are utterly shocked when it goes back to normal the next day.

The central heating broke down. I had been suspecting it for some time from intermittent unusual noises coming from the boiler. And so it came to pass that on Tuesday morning, it did not fire up.

I did wonder if I had let the oil level go down too far, and had actually ordered a delivery on Monday. This was partially because I knew I was running low, but also because world events at the weekend spooked me enough to think of these things.

The oil arrived, safely, on Wednesday but made no impression on the boiler. I phoned the heating engineers who sent a man round in the afternoon.

He diagnosed a faulty pump and capacitor and fitted new ones. Job done fairly quickly. But the heating failed to come on…

More investigation made him think it was the central heating pump as well as the boiler one -as the pipes leading away from the boiler were now hot.

It was news I was dreading, because I knew the central heating pump was in a very difficult to access position which could mean dismantling the built in unit in the living room, and a huge upheaval involving laminate flooring and plywood underlay.

But there is a reason I am not a heating engineer. Our man paced around, pondering and looking at the floors before deciding that the best thing was to cut a hatch under the tumble dryer and knock through to access the pump. Job done!

Well not exactly, because he had to get the timber and come back today, but it is fixed now, and no upheaval.

And now we realise just how bad the heating was, because its honestly like a sauna in here and everything is turned way down. We kept saying to each other how warm it was - how the bathroom radiator was hot all the way up! The boy's room, which is normally like an ice box is roasting. We enjoyed this heatwave for a couple of hours until we turned it off.

It just shows how we become accustomed to mediocrity.

I made butter chicken for dinner, as if we hadn't had enough heat. It was a special request and was much appreciated - by me too.

So there you are. Bet you didn't expect such a steamy episode.